Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Government's Endless Orgy of Spending

By Alan
Caruba

I
frequently marvel that a loon like Nancy Pelosi could have become Speaker of
the House and is currently the House minority leader. Recently she said, “The
cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that
people understand that. We cannot have cuts just for the sake of cuts.”

This is
dishonesty on a galactic scale. It also provides an insight into why, short of
the mandatory sequestration that went into effect last year when Congress could
not come to any agreement on any cuts, the government continues to spend money
in ways that are just short of criminal.

In July, a
Rasmussen poll determined that 62% of likely voters thought the government
should cut spending in response to the nation’s economic problems. That
percentage was actually down from the previous month’s 65% and was the lowest
support for reduced spending since August 2012.

That same
month, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed that 83% of Americans
disapproved of the job performance of Congress. Approval of President Obama’s
job performance was closely divided between 45% approval and 50% disapproval.

There are
any number of think tanks and citizen’s organizations that keep tabs on
government spending, but their periodic reports and news release seem to have
no impact whatever. That’s something that members of Congress and others inside
the Beltway know.

At a time
when Republicans and Democrats will lock horns over raising the debt ceiling
and the President thinks that any effort to defund the Affordable Care Act is
the result of the Republicans “messing with me” and not a reflection of how
widely disliked Obamacare is, it is instructive to look at just a few of the
ways public funding is being regularly and routinely squandered in ways that
are obscene.

As just
one small example, one good way to save taxpayer dollars would be to shut down
the National Science Foundation (NSF). It is spending $5.7 million on a project
to develop card games, videos and other “educational” programs “to engage adult
learners and inform public understanding and response to climate change.” The
Climate Change Educational Partnership (CCEP) was established by Congress in
2009 and, to date, it has already spent $46 million on the “threat” of
something that doesn’t even exist, global warming.

One of the
NSF’s grants went to a study of what motivates workers, love or money? It cost
$179,784. Another NSF grant, $2.25 on Tasmanian Devil facial tumors. This is an
animal native to an island off the coast of Australia nowhere else. Part of
another a half-million dollar grant was used to develop a video game the
stimulated a high school prom. The NSF funded $350,000 to Purdue University to
study how golfers could improve their game.

The NSF
may take top honors for insanely wasteful programs and projects, but there is
hardly a single department of the government that does not do the same thing.
All that whining and wailing about sequestration was really about having fewer
dollars to waste and fewer people with which to waste it.

For
example, the Transportation Security Administration lets 5,700 pieces of unused
security equipment sit in storage in a Dallas, Texas warehouse. Worth $184
million, it costs the TSA $3.5 million annually to lease the space.

As
Obamacare expands the role of the Internal Revenue Service and we learn how
some of its administrators targeted, denying or delaying, a common tax-exempt
status to conservative groups routinely granted to all manner of other kinds of
organizations, let us not forget the $4.1 million the IRS spent in 2010 on a
lavish conference for employees.

The
Department of Agriculture awarded a $149,000 grant to researchers at Fairleigh
Dickinson University in New Jersey to study how to eliminate the “freshman 15”
extra weight that these students pack on when they can eat anything and as much
as they want.

Morocco
must have one heck of a good lobbyist because the Labor Department spent $1
million there to improve “gender equality” in the workforce there. The State
Department spent $450,000 to develop “green jobs.”

Dave
Ramsey, who advises people on radio, TV and in print on how to manage their
personal finances, has said, “The fact is that government can get out of debt
the same way you get out of debt. You quit borrowing money. You quit spending.
You balance the budget. But to do all of that, you’ll need to make some
sacrifices.”

The only
reason sequestration went into effect was because a blue-ribbon panel of
members of Congress could not agree to
any reductions in spending.

Now we
must endure a few weeks of meaningless political haggling to increase the debt
ceiling while the government continues its orgy of senseless spending on
projects and programs like those noted above.

4 comments:

Pelosi is so far up Obamas butt, it will take an operation to get her out.As far as this government goes, it is rotten to the core. It doesn't matter, Republican or Democrat but you damn better be sure you are on their side if you need something done.I recently had the misfortune of selling and buying a home. The BS I've had to go through is mind boggling.Lost permits, new regulations and agencies all covering their asses to keep their cushy government jobs.Jobs they got not for what they know but for who they know.Forget about doing things in a timely manner. They don't need to, they answer to no one except the politician that got them the job.In my sixty years on this earth, times have never been worse.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.